Movies

VIDEO - WHAT'S NEW - MOVIE REVIEW

November 15, 1996

**** Cold Comfort Farm (Gramercy, 106 minutes, PG, priced for rental): Flora Poste, the spunky young heroine of Cold Comfort Farm, believes that she and Jane Austen are soul mates. Flora may not be a world-famous novelist like Austen, but she does so love to write. And she is terribly tidy - a characteristic she also ascribes to the author of Sense and Sensibility. Like the women at the center of that novel, Flora finds herself forced to rely on the hospitality of relatives. After being orphaned, the 19-year-old Londoner travels to Sussex to live with her cousin Judith Starkadder and Judith's extended family at Cold Comfort Farm. Filthy, messy and teeming with openly hostile eccentrics, Cold Comfort Farm is a world or two away from the smart, sophisticated life of 1930s London society, to which Flora had become accustomed. You would think that the displaced young woman would be overwhelmed and depressed by the conditions of farm life. But then, you don't know Flora. No sooner does she arrive on the scene than she cheerfully sets about attempting to tidy up everyone's life. And although this may seem to be an impossible assignment, our unflappable Miss Fixit knows precisely what she is doing. John Schlesinger directed this comedy, and among its many delights is Kate Beckinsale's captivating confidence in the starring role. The young woman has a remarkable gift for sizing people up and an even more amazing talent for figuring out how to provide them with what they want or need - not always the same thing.

*** The Nutty Professor (MCA-Universal, 95 minutes, PG-13, priced for rental): Eddie Murphy plays Sherman Klump, a shy and obese chemistry professor who invents a special formula that allows him to lose weight instantly. But Sherman's formula has side effects that make those of Olestra seem mild. When the M&Ms-chugging prof sheds his fat and morphs into Buddy Love, his personality changes too. In addition to becoming physically attractive, he also turns arrogant, aggressive and totally obnoxious. If the 400-pound Sherman is the sort of character that Murphy the comedian might have created, the svelte Buddy is like a parody of Murphy the macho man. Both Eddies share the spotlight here, and two Eds are better than one. Directed and co-written by Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura, Pet Detective), The Nutty Professor is an uneven comedy with a ramshackle structure and some genuinely funny scenes. The best thing about the film is Murphy's completely convincing performance as Sherman. Of course, the special-effects makeup by the amazing Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) contributes a lot. But Murphy fills out Sherman's huge form with a large man's movements and gestures. He even adopts a modified Foghorn Leghorn voice that seems to complete the character.

* The Pallbearer (Miramax, 100 minutes, PG-13, priced for rental): David Schwimmer - best known as the nerdy paleontologist on TV's Friends - is the star. As Tom Thompson, a 25-year-old aspiring architect from Brooklyn, Schwimmer plays a variation on his adenoidal small-screen persona in this movie. The plot is set in motion when Tom is asked to be a pallbearer at the funeral of a high-school classmate. This request comes from Ruth Abernathy (Barbara Hershey), the dead classmate's mother, who somehow has gotten it into her head that Tom and her son were close. Tom doesn't even remember the guy, but he goes along out of respect for Ruth's grief. And before he quite knows what is happening, he finds himself in a Benjamin/Mrs. Robinson relationship with the older woman. Meanwhile, Tom is attempting to romance Julie (Gwyneth Paltrow), a beautiful young woman he knew in high school, who has just come back into his life. In his feature-film debut, director/co-writer Matt Reeves tries for a wistfully funny tone. But what he ends up with just lies there.